If the Face To Face exhibition has whetted your appetite for polar projects, you'll be interested to learn that Felicity Aston has launched the Commonwealth Women's Antarctic Expedition. Felicity is currently seeking applications from prospective polar adventurers living in countries like Jamaica, Ghana and India, as well as the UK. If you want to walk to the South Pole in 2009, get your skates on: the closing date for entries is imminent.

Felicity is also looking for support team members who have bags of energy and enthusiasm, and who want to get involved in this polar endeavour.

Starting this Friday, the Scott Polar Research Institute is launching its Face To Face exhibition of historic and contemporary polar portraits.

Contributing photographer Martin Hartley has given me a sneak peek of some of his images that will be appearing alongside a selection of the institute's 20,000 glass plate negatives, magic lantern slides and daguerreotypes going back as far as 1845. All I can say is that it's going to be well worth the trip to Cambridge to see them.

A collection of unique polar camera equipment will also be on display.

A few months ago I was asked to update my introductory chapter on the nature of leadership for the Young Explorers' Trust's online expedition manual, which contains useful information for prospective expeditioners.

And since it's that time of year when thousands of young people are preparing to temporarily swap school and university life for expedition life, it seems like a good time to highlight this free resource.